Milford chef leaves the kitchen but not the food world

Chef Brian Polcyn, 55, of Milford has sold his Forest Grill restaurant and plans to pursue other businesses, including charcuterie. Last week at Schoolcraft College, he taught a class in charcuterie.(Photo: Salwan Georges)

Chef Brian Polcyn opened his first restaurant in 1987 — so long ago the World Wide Web hadn’t been invented and people still got dressed up to go out to dinner. Ever since then, he has owned an award-winning restaurant somewhere in metro Detroit.

Until now.

Polcyn ended his 28-year run as a chef-owner earlier this month, selling his Forest Grill in Birmingham to a group of local investors and stepping away, for the first time in 40 years, from the hot stoves and high pressures of professional kitchens.

At age 55, the Milford man’s diverse accomplishments are, by any measure, impressive.

But more about those later — because this is not a retirement story. The “R” word irks him.

“Do not treat this like a (expletive) retirement party,” he e-mailed Forest Grill when it sent out a letter about an upcoming celebrity chefs dinner to roast him. “I’m not dead … I’m just going on to the third stage of my career.”

“They were going to call it a roast,” he cracked. “I’m too tough to roast — they’ll have to braise me!” (They’re calling it a roast anyway.)

But he isn’t joking about the “third stage” of his career. For months, he has been scouting Corktown for a site where he can launch a charcuterie production company, capitalizing on the expertise for which he is nationally known. He expects to decide on a location “in the next month or so,” he says, and if Corktown doesn’t work, he has his sights on other spots in southeastern Michigan.

He will call it Great Lakes Charcuterie, using Midwest pork for his initial product line and then narrowing his sourcing to Michigan and specific heritage breeds for other, higher-end products.

The plan is a perfect extension of the philosophies, practices and goals the chef has held throughout his career: to affect the way people eat, foster the identity of Midwestern regional cuisine, support Michigan farmers and keep alive the all-but-lost European meat-preservation methods that give us the sausages, hams, salamis and pâtés of charcuterie.

The work won’t give him the adrenalin rush of climbing out of the weeds on a slammed Saturday night in a restaurant kitchen. “But I’ll be stimulated in a new way,” he says. “Taking something from a vision all the way to seeing it succeed — that’s very, very exciting.”

How it started

His first significant job — and the one that shaped him most — was at the Golden Mushroom from 1980 to ’85, where master chef Milos Cihelka’s impossibly high standards and stern discipline produced a generation of exceptional culinarians. Polcyn still reveres the Czechoslovakian-born chef, now in his 80s. “He was the No. 1 person who taught me. He taught me to think like a chef.”

Polcyn left the Mushroom as sous chef in 1985 to take over the kitchen of the Lark in West Bloomfield, winning it Restaurant of the Year honors in 1986 from the now-defunct Detroit Monthly magazine. It was the first of five restaurant-of-the-year titles he won over the years — a number unmatched by any other chef, he says.

His first restaurant ownership came in 1987, when he became chef and co-owner with a partner at the critically acclaimed Pike Street in Pontiac; Chimayo, serving authentic Mexican food, followed in 1990.

Three years later, he opened Acadia across the street from the Palace of Auburn Hills, featuring “wood-roasted American food” prepared in a 16-by-5-foot oven. “I was the first in the state to use a wood-burning oven,” he says. “We roasted chickens, turkeys … it was awesome. But business was kind of tough being across from the Palace,” where event-driven crowds meant feast or famine for the restaurant.

He was married by then with four (and soon, five) children, whom his wife, Julia, was raising virtually alone because of his grueling schedule. The two had met at the Mushroom, when she was a U-M student working as a server for the summer. “I thought she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. It was like a lightning bolt hit,” he said.

It was her idea that he open a restaurant in Milford, near their home, reminding him that his greatest investment wasn’t his restaurants but his family. The town was far from his established clientele, but he sold his other properties and opened Five Lakes Grill in 1995 in a downtown storefront. The gamble paid off, and Five Lakes became a destination for diners from Ann Arbor to Lansing.

It was at Five Lakes where he really began to show his love for local, seasonal, Midwestern ingredients and foods. Practices followed by today’s younger chefs were in place there two decades ago: buying wild morels and ramps from foragers, naming local growers on the menu, purchasing whole pigs and lambs from farmers and turning humble cuts and meat scraps into classic French terrines, pâtés and sausages — a skill Polcyn learned more than 30 years ago from Cihelka.

Its focus on local and seasonal ingredients, Midwestern regional cuisine and time-honored European cooking techniques helped make it the Free Press Restaurant of the Year in 2005.

He opened the white-tablecloth Forest Grill, set on the edge of downtown Birmingham, in 2008 and went on to win back-to-back Restaurant of the Year awards from HOUR magazine and the Free Press.

Back in Milford, the recession was taking a heavy toll on business at Five Lakes and he converted it to a casual Mexican concept, Cinco Lagos, in 2009.

Restaurants weren’t Polcyn’s only focus through the years. Among his other activities along the way, he joined the faculty of Schoolcraft College, where he has held a full-time position for 18 years; co-authored two books on charcuterie with Cleveland writer Michael Ruhlman (one of which was nominated for a James Beard award); launched a lucrative seminar series called Cured Cuisine, in which he travels across the country teaching charcuterie to other professional chefs.

The next phase

“The people I was cooking for at Pike Street when I was in my 20s, were in their 40s. All those people are now in their 70s, and I’m 55,” Polcyn says.

“The restaurant industry is a young guy’s game. Every athlete reaches an age where you can’t perform at your highest level,” he says. But true to character, he doesn’t want to fade quietly away. “I want to be Derek Jeter,” getting a hit on his last at-bat and leaving to thunderous applause.

“I’ve got a lot of other opportunities hitting me, and I need the free time” away from the restaurant. He decided to sell, he says, because “I didn’t feel like I was giving it the time it deserved.” And, he freely admits, owning a high-end restaurant isn’t as profitable as many of his other projects.

Developing his charcuterie line, which he’s doing in partnership with Ferndale-based Garden Fresh Foods, will take time, he says.

And there’s another thing — a much more personal, enjoyable one: “I’ve got this girl that I married and she still likes to see me after all these years,” he says with mock amazement. And with their children out of the house, he adds jokingly, “what’s really nice is that she doesn’t have to take care of anybody but me now.”

“Selling the restaurant was the right move.”

The chef won’t name his buyers; he will only say they’re “a group of investors.” But the deal he struck left the restaurant and its staff — including chef de cuisine Nick Janutol — in place. Janutol, a Pointes native who previously worked at Chicago’s Michelin-starred L2O, joined Polcyn at Forest Grill two years ago. “Nick has very, very strong skills. His style is clean, direct, thought-out,” Polcyn says. “You only learn the rest — running a business — through experience.”

The charcuterie opportunity

Polcyn plans to phase in his charcuterie production in three stages. The first will be a line of fresh sausages made with pork from the Great Lakes states and designed for sale at retailers like Costco and Kroger.

In the second phase, he’ll make smoked and fully cooked sausages such as bratwursts and German jagerwursts in an artisanal style using specific breeds like Berkshires, along with smoked pork bellies and even fish. And finally will come premium dry-cured, solid-muscle meats — the prosciuttos and guanciales — made with Michigan-raised Mangalitsa pork.

He’ll use a “whole-animal approach,” he says, buying whole pigs from family farms. “If I create the demand for these farmers to raise wholesome, heritage-breed animals, it’ll be good for the farmers and it’ll be good for me, because it brings awareness to the market” about what high-quality charcuterie is really about.

He will miss the restaurant, he says. “Cooking always stimulates me. It makes me excited. … What I won’t miss about the restaurant business is when the dishwasher doesn’t show up. I will not miss having 20 no-shows for reservations on a Saturday night. I will not miss that customers order the wrong thing. I will not miss the aggravation, the crap part, the stress factor.”

As he has always been, he is confident and looking forward, not back. “I really think I have the skill set and vision and aptitude to do a really high-quality smoked and cured meat and sausage line that will compete with the best in the country,” he says. “There are only a half-dozen or so out there.”

Make four slits width-wise across each shrimp belly to keep the shrimp from curling as they cook. Place the shrimp in a bowl and toss them with the chili-garlic sauce. Wet about a quarter of each wonton wrapper along the long edge; roll each shrimp in a wrapper, so that the wrapper forms a cylinder. Set aside.

In a small skillet, combine the pineapple, red pepper, cilantro, olive oil, lime juice and green onions. Warm over low heat. Fry the shrimp in the oil until they are golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Deep-fry the angel-hair pasta quickly. Place two shrimp on a spoonful of the relish and garnish with the fried pasta.

From Brian Polcyn of Five Lakes Grill in Milford. Tested by Susan Selasky for the Free Press Test Kitchen.

Wash the potatoes and place them in a bowl, drizzle them with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, toss them with rosemary and garlic and transfer them to a baking sheet, cover the sheet with foil and bake until tender, about 45 minutes.

When done, cool and peel them into 1/2-inch thick slices. Set them aside.

Preheat a thick-bottomed sauté pan and add 3 tablespoons clarified butter. Season the scallops with salt and pepper. Working in batches, place the scallops in the sauté pan and brown them on one side. Remove them from the pan and place them, brown side up, on a baking sheet with sides. Do not pack them too tightly.

In a separate sauté pan, add the remaining 5 tablespoons clarified butter and preheat over medium heat. Add the potatoes. Stir and shake the pan continuously until the potatoes begin to brown.

Add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Continue to sauté until the mushrooms are brown and release a little juice.

Add the tomatoes and chives, toss, check and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Place the scallops in a preheated 400-degree oven. Make sure the sweet corn sauce is hot and your plates are warm. Pool the sauce in the middle of the plate and spoon a little of the potato mixture in the center. When the scallops are done, about 5 minutes (they will be opaque in the center) arrange 4 scallops per portion around the potato mixture and top with crispy leeks. Serve.

Cook’s note: To make the sweet corn sauce: Cut the kernels from 3 ears of corn. With the back of a knife, scrape the milk from the cob. In a heavy-bottomed sauce pot, heat 2 tablespoons of butter over low to medium heat. Add 1/4 cup diced onions and sauté them slowly. Add the corn kernels and milk from the cob and sauté without browning. Add 1 cup heavy whipping cream and simmer for 18 to 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat, cool slightly and puree the sauce in a blender. If the sauce is too thin, place it back in the sauce pot and simmer until the desired thickness is achieved. Season with salt and white pepper to taste.

To make the crispy leeks: Julienne one medium leek and wash it well. Bring 1 quart of peanut oil up to 375 degrees. Dust the leeks in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Drop them in the oil and fry until crispy, about 8 seconds. Drain well on paper towel before garnishing the scallops with the leeks.

Gianduja (zhahn-DOO-yah) is a blend of milk chocolate and hazelnuts. Look for it at stores such as Papa Joe’s Gourmet Market in Birmingham and Holiday Market in Royal Oak. The praline recipe makes 4 cups. However, you will need just 1 cup for this recipe. Reserve the leftover praline for another use.

PRALINE

21/4 cups sugar

Pinch of salt

11/4 cups water

11/2 cups hazelnuts, toasted and skinned, roughly chopped

BARS

2 pounds Gianduja chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 cup praline

ESPRESSO SAUCE

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

1 tablespoon espresso paste (mix finely ground espresso with water to form a paste)

1/4 cup sugar

6 egg yolks

CHOCOLATE SAUCE

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons honey

6 ounces semisweet chocolate

Cocoa powder for serving

To make the praline: Oil a baking sheet and set it aside.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the sugar, salt and water. Bring the liquid to a simmer, remove the pan from the heat and swirl the pan by the handle, making sure the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is clear.

Place a lid on the pot and continue to boil until the bubbles are big. Remove the lid and continue to cook until the mixture turns a rich brown color. Remove the pan from the heat and add the hazelnuts into the caramel, stirring with a wooden spoon until the nuts are evenly coated.

Pour the mixture onto the well-oiled baking sheet and spread it to an even thickness, about 1/4-inch; cool completely, about 20 minutes.

Once cool, break up the pieces and process them to a powder in a food processor.

Meanwhile, make the bars: In a double boiler over simmering water, melt the chocolate. Divide the mixture between two bowls. Add 1 cup of the praline to one of the bowls.

Line a sided baking sheet with parchment paper and spray the paper with vegetable oil. Pour the chocolate-praline mixture onto the baking sheet. Let it stand in the refrigerator until cool and hard.

Carefully pour the second bowl of chocolate on top (reheat it if needed) and allow it to cool and harden.

Once the chocolate has cooled and hardened completely, cut it into 1-by-3-inch rectangles. You should have 32 rectangles.

To make the espresso sauce: In a medium saucepan combine the milk, heavy cream, vanilla bean and espresso paste and cook over medium heat until hot.

Remove the bean and scrape the seeds out of the bean and into the milk mixture; reserve the pod for another use.

In a bowl, combine the sugar and egg yolks, temper in the hot milk mixture and return the mixture to the saucepan and place it back over medium heat.

Simmer until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon.

Strain the sauce and cool it.

To make the chocolate sauce: In a small saucepan, heat the heavy cream to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the honey and chocolate until the chocolate melts. Cool the mixture.

To serve: Stack 4 chocolate rectangles on each of 8 serving plates. Drizzle with the sauces and dust with cocoa powder.